Doubts raised over arms surrender

Kabul: Wrapped in shawls against the cold, some with scarves to hide their faces, the men stand in front of a table bearing an arsenal of assault rifles and rockets.

As the insurgents renounce their armed struggle and declare they have made peace with Hamid Karzai's government, local journalists film the ceremony.

Such scenes are now a common feature of Afghan news bulletins and portray one of the main pillars of Nato's strategy to overpower the Taliban and force them to the negotiating table prior to the planned exit by US and British forces.

However, The Sunday Telegraph has discovered disturbing evidence that all is not as it seems. New figures show that over the past 18 months the "re-integration" scheme that Britain has funded with £7 million (Dh41.09 million) has attracted only 19 militants in Helmand province, where British troops are fighting.

In at least one Afghan province, the insurgents pledging to change their ways and uphold the Afghan constitution were not what they seemed. Some 200 insurgents in the northern province of Sar-e Pol have recently been struck off the programme, officials told The Sunday Telegraph, because checks subsequently found they were not genuine fighters but imposters seeking cash handouts.

Real fighters

The news will not surprise the scheme's sceptics, who allege that Western taxpayers are being duped by criminals, the unemployed and corrupt officials while the real fighters stay in the conflict or join the government temporarily.

A leaked Nato report earlier this month also appeared to cast doubt on the very premise of the re-integration programme: that Taliban fighters are tired, motivated by money and want a way out.

Fighters in Helmand, where the great majority of Britain's 397 dead have been killed, remain too afraid of their comrades in the Taliban to publicly relinquish the struggle and join the scheme despite security gains in the province, Nato and Afghan officials said.

About 3,000 men have joined nationwide in the past 18 months, but figures show the take-up in the southern and eastern strongholds of Taliban support, including in Helmand, has been negligible .

Major General David Hook, the British officer who leads Nato support for the Afghanistan Peace and Re-integration Programme (APRP), said that the numbers painted only a partial picture. "They don't want to come in because they are afraid it exposes them to the threat of the Taliban," he told The Sunday Telegraph.

"At the moment some of them are more afraid of the Taliban than they are of being killed or captured. "The question here is, how many people have done what Afghans traditionally do when they get tired of fighting? They have just gone home, ... and gone back to normal society."

Fraudulent

Syed Anwar Ahmadti, governor of Sar-e Pol, said more than 600 insurgents had joined the government in his province in the past year and confirmed that 200 had subsequently been judged fraudulent. "It doesn't matter if they don't have guns, they were helping the insurgency in logistics or some other capacity," he said.

Syed Obadullah Sadat, a council member from the eastern province of Ghazni has publicly denounced as a sham the defection last month by more than a dozen fighters. He said: "The process is fake, people are doing it for money. It's all for show." Dr Ghani Bahadari, the Afghan official in Ghazni who runs the scheme, rejected the criticism as "gossip".

— The Telegraph Group Limited, London 2012